“How gross,” murmured Ostara. “What makes people do things like that?”
“Money,” replied Hanuman sadly. “Research facilities like this one have made a lot of Que Qiao shareholders very wealthy.”
Ravana stared in horror at the mutilated carcass. The top of the creature’s skull had been removed, as had part of its brain. Hanuman’s words sounded blunt and cruel but she knew them to be true. The great space race of the late twenty-first century had seen humans venture into space not to explore but to exploit. The quest to safeguard supplies of helium-three to power the new fusion reactors brought about the first lunar colonies and cloud-mining facilities at Saturn, projects which in turn led to the invention of the extra-dimensional drive and the urge to see what was worth having in other star systems. Ascension had ended up a forgotten backwater, albeit notionally a British colony and part of the Commonwealth, because the Barnard’s Star system had nothing anyone wanted. Ravana now saw that Yuanshi had become a war zone for precisely the opposite reason.
“Why are you showing us all of this?” she asked Hanuman. “It’s horrible.”
Hanuman looked at Ganesa, then sighed. “We hate what we’ve learned about Que Qiao over the years,” he said. “We would have quit running these errands long ago if we had not been effectively blackmailed into continuing. Worse still, it’s not just Que Qiao; when Taranis found out what the corporation was doing to his beloved greys it just encouraged him to start his own cloning experiments. You’ve given me a chance to turn the tables.”
“How?” asked Ravana, puzzled.
Ganesa held up the holovid camera. “We now have something with which to do a little blackmailing of our own,” she said. “An insurance policy, if you like. I wasn’t convinced it was worth the risk to get this, but it isn’t nice being under the Que Qiao thumb.”
“Risk?” Ostara glanced at the cameras, startled by the reminder they were illegally trespassing in a top-secret research station. “Are Que Qiao agents on their way?”
“Almost certainly.” Hanuman relieved Ganesa of the camera. “We should get back to the Sun Wukong. You’ve done me a big favour,” he told Ravana. “A very big favour.”
“Don’t thank me,” she muttered darkly. “Thank my alien implant.”
“Now it’s my turn,” Hanuman said, then smiled. “I’ll take you to Ayodhya, but I think we first need to recruit some help. Unfortunately, the only people we can turn to on this moon are Kartikeya’s bunch of idiots, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
Ravana looked at him in surprise. “You mean…?”
Hanuman nodded. “Let’s go and get your father.”
Ravana gave him a hug. “Before we go, there’s one last thing I’d like to do.”
Governor Jaggarneth glared at the holovid display upon the wall of his office. Today’s cricket highlights and seeing Yuanshi soundly thrashed by Australia had already put him in a bad mood, but now the Ayodhya news channel had picked up on an item from Anjayaneya and a local reporter was on screen babbling excitedly about strange creatures in the night. By the time Jaggarneth’s own sources had confirmed that someone had broken into a nearby research station and opened the cages, the story had hit the interstellar grapevine and it was too late to bury the bad news. He was just flicking through the security footage from the plantation on a second screen on his desk when there came a knock at the door.
“Come in,” he said wearily.
The door opened and Dana entered, holding Quirinus at gunpoint.
“Governor Jaggarneth,” greeted Dana. “You asked to see the prisoner.”
“Indeed I did,” Jaggarneth replied, then waved towards the wall screen. “Though this may be an inopportune time. Why did we not burn the retros on this story before it started pinballing the servermoons? What we need is a quantum leap in security protocols to facilitate response times in parsecs, not light years!”
“Actually, parsecs and light years are measures of distance, not time,” said Dana. She decided not to add that a quantum leap was the smallest possible in physics.
“Whatever. I’m a politician, not an astrologer.”
“Astronomer?” suggested Quirinus.
“Silence!” retorted Jaggarneth. He turned to Dana. “Who is this?”
“Quirinus O’Brien. Fenris brought him in from Hemakuta,” Dana replied. “Fenris would have come himself but he is feeling a little unwell after our journey.”
Quirinus smiled. He had brought the Platypus down through the Yuanshi atmosphere as uncomfortably as he could. By the time they landed Fenris was a vomiting nervous wreck.
“O’Brien, eh? The one with links to our exiled friend the Maharani?” Jaggarneth regarded Quirinus closely. “How are you enjoying your stay at Sumitra?”
“It’s not bad,” Quirinus said with a shrug. “Room service is a little slack. I will be checking out tomorrow, so could you arrange a wake-up call for about nine o’clock?”
“A man with a sense of humour,” observed Jaggarneth coldly. “I suppose whoever it was who released all these specimens into the wild also thought it was funny!” Part of him did wonder why the scary ashtapadas had reportedly been left caged. It was a curious fact that they shared a common ancestry with Terran spiders but no one knew how that was possible. “Why do people insist on making life difficult for me? Who on Yuanshi has done this?”
“One of the intruders possessed a special-services implant,” Dana informed him. “It is unregistered but we’re checking the files of known agitators.”
“I hope your security plans for the peace conference are a little better prepared,” said Jaggarneth. “We need to be calling the shots, not Kartikeya and his miscreants! Why did Fenris bring this man here?” he suddenly asked, causing Quirinus to glance up from where he had been studying what was on the desk holovid screen. The governor was not impressed by the pilot’s attempt at a winning smile. “I’ve read this man’s file and he’s nothing but a third-rate trader with a few petty misdemeanours to his name.”
“Fenris had his reasons,” replied Dana. “I will ask him to report as soon as possible.”
“I’m more concerned about that cyberclone,” muttered Jaggarneth. “You know those things can be used for espionage. Maybe we should reprogram it to replace the real Raja and get this whole affair over and done with.” Exasperated, he gave Quirinus a frosty stare and waved a hand towards the door. “Get him out of my sight! I have work to do!”
Dana nodded. As he was led away, Quirinus took one last look at the image upon the screen on Jaggarneth’s desk. He was surprised to recognise all five of the figures captured creeping furtively around the secret laboratory, but that they were together on Yuanshi and determined to cause trouble raised his spirits like nothing else.
“That’s my girl!” he murmured.
Chapter Ten
Countdown to the conference
THE NOISE WAS INCREDIBLE: a truly violent cacophony of both revelation and revulsion that roared through the air like a hypersonic walrus. The thunderous rasps and discordant wails were born of frustration that nonetheless revelled in both the anguish and misguided passion of a doomed attempt to rise above adversity. It was an assault upon the senses both jagged and raw, where any tiny glimpse of untapped potential was quickly lost amidst the chaos of hoots and howls. Then suddenly the mayhem was over, leaving listeners stunned as the performance drifted into silence like the echo of a departing bomber squadron. If there was something greater lurking within the souls of the players it had stayed well hidden.